108 replies to this topic

[oldradagast]

KraftySOT, on 13 September 2015 - 02:52 PM, said:

Yeah GlassDoor can be a scary read.

Its really like they replaced our OnStar with GPS, but removed the engine, seats, and steering wheel.

Then, they tell you that they'll worry about the engine (weapon balance) later, but for now, just evaluate how the "new" and "balanced" car behaves with the above changes. Ugh!

[ArchSight]

Aw..! I got back from vacation and finally got the chores done from cleaning it up. I guess I'll try out the new balance later.

[Soul Tribunal]

Paul Inouye, on 12 September 2015 - 03:46 PM, said:

Hey folks, we're shutting down the PTS servers for now. There just aren't enough participants at the moment. We will take another look at putting the test server back up for shorter amounts of time so we don't detract from any other event like the double XP event going on right now. This also gives us a chance to make a few changes and fixes due to feedback, metrics and those typos that gave certain 'Mechs quirk values in the 1000's!

Not to detract what you are trying to do Paul, but some of the participation lacking from this is probably also due to the sky is falling mentality that you are hopefully reading.

If you'd be so kind could you in straightforward terminology what exactly this stage of the PTS is? Will Weapons and other quirks or such come next? That would help people devote more time to getting your team the metrics you need.
Clear and concise, lest you lose people to nullify all the work you are trying to do.

I've been on the dev side and know from both aspects how dangerous being unclear can be to a player base that does not see your end of the structure.

-ST

[Ragnahawk]

Why don't you just make the event on the Public Test Server only, that way we will all play on it.

[PraetorGix]

Sigh... 4 hours of DLing and setting up to find out you removed it already? Yes, in general it was utter crap, but I was prepared and trying to give useful feedback to you guys. Great way to ensure you're going to have more testers the next round...

[smokefield]

never got to play the test server but I have read the changes, I have read a lot of posts from those who played it and there are some things that trouble me.

1. You (PGI) spent a lot of time and resourcesso far to bring this game to what is now. And it wasn't an easy labor. SO what do you want to do now - delete all progress made, negate all the good things because there are some other issues that needs adressed, do you want to start over ? it took 3+ years to have the present balance system and now you want to start over by adding another factor aka infotech ?

2. personally i liked that some mechs were special, had special quirks and were good for special roles. I liked that different flavor a GI added, or the wang, or the dragon 1n. That I liked and I wanted to see more of those special mechs. It was intersting to pilot one and none was OP, you just had to know how to deal with them. And that made things interesting, when you faced a good pilot that knew both your weakness and strong point. I really hope that these mechs will continue to exist. Trying to flat out all the mechs and weapons to fall in the same narrow and equal level will just kill any fun. Most of us like to play this game for its diversity...otherwise is just another (bad) fps.

3. MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL - ARE YOU CRAZY ? INSTEAD OF FOCUSING YOUR TIME AND RESOURCES ON WHAT'S MISSING = CONTENT, YOU WANT TO INVEST THEM IN CHANGING SOMETHING THAT IS WORKING AT THE MOMENT ? instead of doing those alterations needed to IMPROVE what you have you want to start over ? You actually want us to start over again with all the crap we've put so far to be in this present point instead of bringing us more of that things promised long time ago ? are you really that blind ?

here another good post i liked, read it its interesting.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__4686249

[Captain Artemis]

And we are came to the moment, when all hate and flame about not existing quirks were pointless. Because this session of test was all about the sensors, not about weapon balance. Good job community.

[Primetimex]

Thanks for shutting down the PTS Server and I only found out it about it 2 days later AFTER I had spent 70 Gigabytes worth of bandwidth downloading and precious time installing it.

This is following my "network-error" post earlier.

Next time you are asking the Community to "PTS" well you know where you can shelve it!

[Avimimus]

Any chance you guys could post an ETA for when the testing will resume?

[KraftySOT]

Captain Artemis, on 13 September 2015 - 10:48 PM, said:

And we are came to the moment, when all hate and flame about not existing quirks were pointless. Because this session of test was all about the sensors, not about weapon balance. Good job community.

To be fair. This is exactly what ive been saying all along.

And also to be fair...they could have avoided the massive confusion by being more transparent.

[Dimento Graven]

Captain Artemis, on 13 September 2015 - 10:48 PM, said:

And we are came to the moment, when all hate and flame about not existing quirks were pointless. Because this session of test was all about the sensors, not about weapon balance. Good job community.

Captain Artemis most of us get that this was theoretically about 'InfoTech warefare' as PGI stated HOWEVER you must remember the following:

1. WTF do structure, turn, and acceleration/deceleration quirks have to do with sensors?!?!? >>IF<< PGI just had the Target Retention, Target Scan Time, and Target Acquisition Delay quirks in, instead of everything else, there'd be a crap ton less confusion on this issue.
2. Why do the quirks appear so goddamned random, even among variants in a single Chassis?!?!? The Hunchback for example: The GI gets +4 for retention, but the 4SP and 4G get -1, where the 4P and 4P(C) get -2, and oddly enough the 4J gets +3. Perhaps if PGI had provided the 'algorithms' they're basing these changes on it'd help, but seriously, this **** looks f'ing random.
3. Most of us are intelligent enough to realize these changes alone will f up balance more than fix it. Especially given the fact that in the current implementation the Clans can game the 'quirk' system simply by swapping out Omnipods for the most beneficial quirk combination possible.

Seriously this, if left as is, will have some SERIOUS bad long term affects on balance.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 14 September 2015 - 07:48 AM.

[Captain Artemis]

@KraftySOT, @Dimento Graven
In case of future update, they really should create other panel within the mechlab, where we could see specific capabilities about the targeting/gathering/sending informations.

For example states like +300% or -300% leads me to misunderstanding it, and starting to thinking about how big was the nerf hammer they used. Sometimes I didn't even known the base stats that they modified, even since I'm playing from closed beta.

Stats about target info gathering, or anything should be placed in other box with easy numbers like - 2,3,5. The real number of how it works, which then we could easily comprehend to other variants and chassis.

[KraftySOT]

Yeah I think a flyaway menu for all quirks would be rad. Instead of information bloat in the mech placard.

And I get their reasoning (its not the worst but I wouldnt call it great either). This is the BASE for mechs. They want to nail down everything a mech does other than shooting gundams.

Frankly its less on their plate that way. Weapons is a huge thing and all balance revolves around it. We still need an actual weapons pass, which is still down the road.

They want us to get this tested and working before they do the next 'stage'.

Sure its backwards, but its not based on what is the best way to do it, but the "best way for PGIs situation". Which is a company low on engineers, who doesnt have the bandwidth to do giant comprehensive things all at once.

[Lucky Noob]

most Important... we need the Server running

[ShinobiHunter]

Does anyone know when they are putting the PTS back online?

[Anachronda]

merz, on 12 September 2015 - 04:33 PM, said:

remarkably, people are incredibly vocal about all of the things that the public test environment currently gets wrong. the problem i'm seeing is that very few are on the public test server. i've wanted 30min to an hour between games in the 'searching' screen and notice that the forums set up for discussing different mech chassis individual balance remain relatively free of posts. Instead, there are a lot of people saying how paul sucks, russ sucks, pgi sucks and is obviously incapable of making a decent game, then in the same breath continuing that they've spent hundreds of dollars on this one (made by PGI.) .. go figure.


Anyway, lets try and work out serious suggestions on how we can move beyond these placeholder values other than 'PGI SUCKS, DON'T TOUCH MY META' etc.

(also, bonus points for zatoichi to the guy above. because he looks like a rat sniffing about with his whiskers)

Maybe because the annnouncement said the servers would not even be available yet until the 14th? Or that is how I read it. The announcement said there was a need to patch over the weekend because the disconnect bugs were still present, and that monday the 14th it would be ready. Now it says as of the 13th, before that even could happen, that the servers were shut down again. How can people be on if they are told not to be on?

EDIT: Oh yes, and also, the event was on. I wish there were fewer instances where events are designed to incentivise people in a different direction and PGI wonders why they do what they rewarded them for doing. For the record, I am excited about the potential for some of the changes, and even though I am sure no matter what changes some people will be unhappy I am probably not going to stop playing because of it. I'll just adjust to the new and move on.

Unfortunately there have only been vague pronouncements thus far, so I was very curious to see what the actual changes might seem like. Not having ever done the PTS, I'm also puzzled on how you can test when you have no cbills with which to buy any mechs to test and no time in which to do it.

Edited by Anachronda, 15 September 2015 - 01:48 AM.

[Wibbledtodeath]

Well, while PTS is down and you are fixing a few things for next round of testing....

Can you REMOVE GHOST HEAT- Then balance? New players find it unintuitive and quirks can now be used.

Ballistics and missiles don't really need it anyway.

[Anachronda]

Jimmy DiGriz, on 13 September 2015 - 05:22 AM, said:

Completely agree with SkyHmmr; get rid of red for negative quirks and just use a neutral colour for both relying on the player to recognise the difference between + & -

In modern teaching practice, red is discouraged for marking as it holds too many negative connotations in western culture.

On a further note - would it be possible to simply show max/min values e.g. sensor range 550m,time to acquire target 2.5 seconds rather than a difference between base and actual value?

I understand what you mean w/r/t teaching, but the negatives are supposed to be negative. I would think that having positive green and negative red would make things more readable. As an aside, as a student I always thought the point of the teacher's marking being red, denoting negative, was useful. You made a mistake and they are pointing it out. If you don't want your paper to look like the teacher slashed it bloody, do better. But I'm not a trained educator.

[Anunknownlurker]

@Anachronda - it's a filthy psychological trick! Because we see red (meaning a - or a nerf of some kind) we are, in general, automatically defensive "what have I lost? What's been taken away?". By changing that paradigm and either displaying the negatives in a less predominant colour or, better in my opinon, not showing the negatives at all, i.e. everything is positive albeit from a lower baseline, there is a slight "feelgood factor" about the changes which is currently missing.

[Kaptain]

coe7, on 12 September 2015 - 04:02 PM, said:

Playing with that joke of balance pass looming over us is going to kill this game. It was a travesty. Who would want to invest RL money or time with INFOTEK changes looming on top of us?

You are doing Star Wars Galaxies NGE full speed in anticipation of your steam launch. Lets throw half of your playerbase under the bus and think steam will replace it if we just make the game simplified.

Years worth of your own finetuning of chassis, builds and systems are being tossed away on imagery benefits of targeting boxes that will result in total baldness of IS mechs. Its back to 2013 where hardpoints were only thing that mattered, IS had very few good chassis and alot of crap.

You cannot have one of the pillars of balance as a null factor, aka sensors and stuff.

Worst is that most mechs feel and play totally different than people who have grown to like them. You are already old game, making this drastic changes and removing alot of flavor aquired over the years is going to be undoing of MWO.

No longer there is JJ-DDs with brutal and fun dakka, no longer there is Wolverines with lasers, no longer there is GI's or any hunchbacks worth playing. Lights are muddled roles of nothing because rudder and pedals crowd cant keep up with fundamentals of FPS shooters, aka aiming. Where is the lore of longer range ravens, knifefighting firestarters or zooming locusts? IS lost all of its flavor gathered over years for absolutely nothing.

We are way past the point where you can say look at this great INFOTEK and think people will buy it. Game is pretty damn fun right now with live balance, all we wanted was slight reductions on clan weapon balance, notably medium clan laser and even more fun, playable IS chassis via quirks to those with low hardpoints getting HP boosts.

Every major game is balanced by ex pro's / highend players or people deep in the scene being responsible for balance. Watch examples of SC2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. Your personal ability to play this game is visible to everyone in your twitch channel. Flat out I will say this, if you need a red box around mechs and have problems with people flanking you as you do on your twitch stream, or have issues shooting arm of a wolverine or dragon, it is not a reason to balance the whole game based on your individual skill level.

Truth thurts. You hurt this community. With this balance failure of an idea looming over to completely overhaul the game, how do you think active units will keep their players intersted and paying to upkeep this game?

Thank you.